


The Taste of Salt

by Yeah_JSmith



Series: The Art of Moving Forward [2]
Category: Titanic (1997)
Genre: AFAB Jack Dawson, Bisexual Rose DeWitt Bukater, F/F, F/M, Literally it's just smut, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Jack Dawson, Original Afterlife, Smut, did I mention smut?, with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 15:43:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14876646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: The one where Jack and Rose use an actual bed.Or, emotional smut aboard a ship that isn't going to sink, behind a door that will stay closed until they want it open again.





	The Taste of Salt

**Author's Note:**

> Again, nobody wants this story except me, but that's okay. CW for period-typical misunderstanding of sex and gender, I guess? And therefore terminology that isn't correct today and would probably be considered borderline internalized transphobia, but it's not hurtful in the context of contrasts.

You’ve missed the taste of high-end tobacco and floral tea. Rose quit smoking when the Surgeon General let the country know that it caused cancer – although you’re not sure how you know this – but she’s the same now as she was when you died, in terms of scent and taste. There’s something comforting, familiar, about licking the taste off her lips. Hands buried in your windswept, salt-stiffened hair, she lets out a soft sigh. You try not to look intense, but you can’t help it; you are always intense. The carefree tumbleweed attitude is deceptive. You look at the world like it’s important. You have to, if you want to  _ make it count. _

You lower your head, make a line down her throat, a dash of tongue punctuating each little touch of your lips. It’s all Rose can do to stay standing, you can tell, but she does, because your work-strong arms and callused hands are at the small of her back. Her fingernails scrape at your scalp and you moan – a quiet thing, bleeding right into her skin – it’s like a prayer when you say her name,  _ Rose, Rose,  _ and she answers, “Oh,  _ Jack.” _

You feel more like Jacqueline right now, but just as much as you’ve missed the shape of her name in your mouth, you’ve missed the angles of your name in hers. You don’t correct her, so she says it again,  _ Jack, oh, please, Jack,  _ and you can’t help the upturn of your lips when you mark her collarbones with sweet little kisses. You feel as though you’ve waited a lifetime for this.  _ She _ certainly has. You’re both dead, but this is  _ so alive.  _ You’re a single organism, sharing space, sharing air. She smells of smoke and salt. You feel like you’ve sucked on a battery. It’s not  _ enough. _

This time, a more experienced Rose takes charge, cupping your cheeks in her palms and turning your face gently upward. She kisses you like it will be the last time you see each other, and you do your level best to respond with the artist’s precision she appreciates so much. She is living art. She has more muscle than you remember, toned arms and firm stomach clenching under your fingertips. Relics from life, you think vaguely. The way she throws her head back when you rub your thumbs over her nipples has you biting your lower lip, trying to remember how to breathe. You commit every movement to memory in hopes that later you can draw it for her. 

(You aren’t very smart, you  _ know  _ that, and you haven’t read enough to keep up with her, but you can look into her and see the truth. Even if it means nothing, it’s still  _ something.) _

Building on what you know, like laying foundation, you systematically explore as much of her as you can while standing, checking off places you like to be touched and crossing them off if she doesn’t respond like you would. She seems to like stroking the back of your head, perhaps because she knows it’s a weak spot for you. She could put you to sleep like that, in another situation, but in this one, it makes you hyper-aware of yourself and of her. You edge your hands down, over the crests of her pelvis and beyond, but she’s only halfway out of her dress.You want to touch her, but you also want to keep kissing her.

She takes the choice away, thankfully. Nips at your lips once and steps out of her dress, pulls off her underthings while you shed your own simpler clothing, sits down on the bed to remove her shoes. You kneel down and do it for her, catching her eye and soaking in her smile. You press your lips to the inside of each calf as you remove each shoe, watching her bite her lip. Her toes press into your palms. You feel like you’re holding the most precious thing in the world.

Her feet are still pretty and delicate, but up close, her hands are different. Firmer, rougher – the hands of a worker, not a society girl. This must be the way she remembers herself for whatever reason. You take them in yours, kiss the fingers of her right hand, index, middle, and so on, while you caress the left hand with your thumb. Her knuckles are the same under your lips. She sighs and you want to wrap yourself in the sweet sound.

Rose isn’t the first girl to take off her clothes for you. She’s just the only girl who’s demanded you do the same. There’s something powerful in that; she doesn’t just want Jack Dawson, she wants  _ all  _ of you, every little piece, even the ones that may not always fit. She is magic in motion, and when you lean down to rub her thighs with your palms and lick softly at her sex, she is magic in sound, too, the tug on your hair as electrifying as the soft cry stuck in her throat. You’ve been on your knees before, but never like this. Never as yourself.

You pull her legs over your shoulders and suckle at her like it’s life-saving, running your fingers over the smooth skin on either side of your head. Her hips move in time with your tongue, pressing against your mouth. You don’t want to breathe when you could be caught here, wrapped inside the cross of her calves, your hair twisted in her fingers. She tastes like woman and salt. You have the absolutely absurd thought that she must know by now how to ride, moving the way she is. 

And you laugh, because it’s funny and because she’s  _ Rose.  _ She’d probably laugh right along with you if she could hear your thoughts.

_ Put your hands on me, Jack,  _ she said a lifetime ago, and you reach up, remembering the flicking motion that had her practically panting. She squeezes your ears between her thighs, but that’s all right. You like pleasing the people you care about – maybe not doing what you’re told, but seeing them happy, participating in their enjoyment. The look in her eyes is enchanting, and you hold her gaze, because you can’t not. 

She lowers herself until she’s flat on the bed, bringing you along so that she can kiss you again, lapping at the inside of your teeth. Her hands are ice and fire along your chest, hot fingertips leaving trails of gooseflesh, and you think,  _ why would she stay still when she could do something?  _ It’s one of the things you love about her. Rose  _ is  _ action, willing to face consequences, even  _ terrible  _ ones, so long as they’re self-imposed.

(But then, what can you really expect from the woman you only met because she was trying to kill herself?)

The thought is only sobering for a moment, during which Rose bodily handles you, pushing you over to lie on your back more securely on the bed. Your feet are still dangling off, but it’s only a stray thought next to the overwhelming feel of her fingers on you, running circles around the little bead that makes you jerk and cry out in distress or joy or just love, maybe. She lowers her head to lick at your chest, flicks her tongue over your nipples, makes no comment on how flat you are or how not-a-man you are. Stark contrast to the rest of the world. You twist the covers with your hands because you’re afraid if you touch her she’ll disappear. Nothing was ever meant to feel this good, you’re sure of it. She runs her free hand down your arm as she nips at your neck, and when her fingers tangle in yours you take that as your cue. You’re going to survive this.

You copy her motions with  _ your  _ free hand, testing her softness, putting angular pressure on that little bud. She knows more than you now, it’s obvious – she’s  _ done  _ more than you, now – and it’s an erotic thought, that after a lifetime of lovemaking she still came back to you. You feel like a clumsy child, but she moans against you, mouths at your skin, becomes frantic in her precise motions. 

She works you like clay, turns you into something wet and beautiful, absorbs the shocks with her strong thighs even while she’s keening. Your head balloons to three times its size as your muscles clench over and over, a more intense release than what you usually end up with. You have salt in your sinuses and sparks in your brain, but you can still see her, beautiful,  _ spellbinding. _ She has a way of arcing her back rather than arching it, hips moving once again with the rhythm of your thumb swiping side to side diagonally. Somewhere in your spinning head you have the thought to slide down and use your tongue again, but then she cries out, rigid and shaking. 

The air is sharp between you as you gaze up at her. Bold, beautiful, breathtaking. Your heart can’t contain it all and hot, heavy emotion spills out into your chest.

“Jack, you’re crying,” she says quietly before leaning down to tangle her fingers in your hair again, pressing kisses to each cheek just under your eyes. You run your hands along the sides of her, from the bottoms of her breasts to her hips and back, because whatever contact you can get is never going to be enough. You want her to crawl inside you or – something less disturbing but no less intimate. 

“I missed you,” you tell her, because it’s the only thing you can say that isn’t either trite or a lie. You’re not sad, you’re overwhelmed. You’re not in pain, you’re caught up in excitement. You love her so much you could die from it, even though it doesn’t make sense, even though you’ve been apart so long, even though you shouldn’t be in love after only a few days. 

“Oh, I missed you too. So much.” She half-collapses, rolling to curl up next to you, one leg between yours and her head nestled in the cradle of your neck and shoulder. She scratches very lightly at your chest with nails blunted for manual labor. You want to ask about it, about her musculature, about her experience, but more than that, you want to lie here with her and fill yourself up with this moment. “I promised you I would live, and I did. I  _ never  _ let go of that promise. And that meant taking you with me, everywhere I went. Up in the air, all over the world, to college and on the big screen. You were there when I had my children. You were there when my lover disappeared and when my husband died. I am so grateful to you, for all of it. Are you...willing to be present now? Do you want to make a new life with me?”

“Rose, I’ve waited a lifetime to ask you that question and you beat me to it. Yes.  _ Yes.  _ I don’t know what’s coming next, or if we’ll ever get off this ship. If we don’t, we’ll dance and eat and explore until the end, whenever and whatever that is. If we do…”

“If we do?”

You kiss the top of her head, tasting the sweat on her scalp. “Then it’ll be your turn to take my hand and show me the world through your eyes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'll take "Self-indulgent garbage" for 200, Alex.


End file.
